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Godzilla, Kong, Gamera & Co.: The Kaiju Mega-Thread

It saddens me that War of the Gargantuas is such a cult hit in America while the vastly superior film it's a loose sequel to, Frankenstein Conquers the World, gets far less attention. Part of the problem is that the English dub obscures that it's a sequel by dubbing over "Frankenstein" with "Gargantua" -- perhaps because American audiences would've been confused by seeing Bigfoot-like creatures referred to as Frankensteins. (More at my blog: https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2016/02/03/thoughts-on-tohos-frankenstein-duology/ )
 
Oh, hey, Toy Galaxy just dropped a video on Godzilla 1985:
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And I have that same t-shirt as Dan Larson wears. Wore it just today. Though, technically it's a bad fit, as it displays the Japanese poster for the 1954 film, as opposed to the American poster for 1985. But that's splitting hairs.
 
New trailer for the upcoming Godzilla Day "Godzilla vs Gigan" short in glorious suitmation:
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Wow, that has got to be some of the fastest I've ever seen Kaiju that weren't CGI move.
 
Christopher said:
It saddens me that War of the Gargantuas is such a cult hit in America while the vastly superior film it's a loose sequel to, Frankenstein Conquers the World, gets far less attention. Part of the problem is that the English dub obscures that it's a sequel by dubbing over "Frankenstein" with "Gargantua" -- perhaps because American audiences would've been confused by seeing Bigfoot-like creatures referred to as Frankensteins. (More at my blog: https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2016/02/03/thoughts-on-tohos-frankenstein-duology/ )
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I would liked to have seen Criterion do a box set rounding up all the other Toho Kaiju movies, in their original and dubbed versions, not only so we could have them in one place, but to see what changes the American distributors made to the movies as you point out in your article.
 
JD said:
Wow, that has got to be some of the fastest I've ever seen Kaiju that weren't CGI move.
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Just curious, but have you seen "Godzilla: Final Wars"? Last of the "suit-mation" feature length films and released in 2004, the kaiju in that film, including Godzilla himself really "hoof it". In fact, the Goji suit in that clip looks a lot like the Final Wars costume.
 
JD said:
Once when it first came out, but I don't really remember it.
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Ah, well, the kaiju are quite agile and swift in that movie. One sequence involves a fight between Godzilla against Rodan, King Cesar and Anguirus that plays out rather like a soccer match...with Anguirus being the ball! They certainly don't lumber and trudge in that scene!
 
I don't like it when kaiju are swift, because it diminishes their sense of vastness and mass. I mean, of course it would be physically impossible for anything that large to move on land at all; it would be as helpless as a beached whale, crushed to death under its own bulk. But even within the fanciful physics of kaiju movies, there should at least be a credible illusion of mass, something that takes enormous force and time to accelerate or decelerate -- like how an oil tanker needs miles to slow to a stop. Even if a kaiju's muscles could propel its limbs with great speed, it would need time to build up to that speed, or to counter the momentum and slow down again.

Not to mention how much wind would be generated by something that huge moving swiftly through the air. If Godzilla swung his tail fast enough, the tip might even exceed the speed of sound and create a sonic boom.
 
Happy Godzilla Day! Here is the first of the two new shorts today, the CG-animated Godzilla vs Gigan Rex:
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Like the Godzilla design there, a bit of a mix of Heisei and Shin Godzilla. I feel like it's implied in the narration and some visual cues that this is supposed to be the grown-up Godzilla Jr from the Heisei series, but I could be wrong.

Coming up, the suitmation short.
 
Kaiju said:
Happy Godzilla Day! Here is the first of the two new shorts today, the CG-animated Godzilla vs Gigan Rex:
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For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
Like the Godzilla design there, a bit of a mix of Heisei and Shin Godzilla. I feel like it's implied in the narration and some visual cues that this is supposed to be the grown-up Godzilla Jr from the Heisei series, but I could be wrong.
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That was my assumption as well. The music at the end would also imply that. Edit: And the opening narration was apparently by Megumi Odaka who played Miki Saegusa in the Heisei series.

We've also got official confirmation of a new Toho Godzilla feature film coming in exactly one year:
https://twitter.com/godzilla_jp/status/1588004370901176321?s=46&t=WOYN5nKwAQmhF5z7dyAUUg
This would seem to be the one we heard about earlier that's believed to be set at least partially in the 1940s.
 
Kaiju said:
Happy Godzilla Day! Here is the first of the two new shorts today, the CG-animated Godzilla vs Gigan Rex:
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Decent, but too many CG animators fail to learn how to give objects a sense of inertia and mass, and to animate characters actually having to exert themselves to make something move. I talked before about how kaiju action scenes often fail to convey the ponderous vastness of kaiju, but at least live-action suit performers have actual mass, and they don't seem as weightless as balloons when someone swings them around or knocks them away.

Also, the ending was a bit vague. It was unclear that Gigan Rex had been defeated until the short suddenly ended. I would've expected a more decisive destruction shot.
 
While it hasn't appeared on the official YT channel, the suitmation short has been uploaded unofficially by several other channels. For obvious reasons I won't link 'em here, but you all know how to use the YT search bar.
 
It is. Has it uploaded the short? Because I can't find it there. Thus far, they've only uploaded the 30 second teaser and the CG animated short.
 
Gigan had to be nerfed a bit. Arms that are all metal claws should mean a win…the Kaiju I would least like to face were I one myself.
 
That short was pretty cool. I don't think I've ever seen any of the movies with Gigan, or at least I don't remember him in any of the ones I've seen.
Is it pronounced gig-an or guy-gan?
 
JD said:
That short was pretty cool. I don't think I've ever seen any of the movies with Gigan, or at least I don't remember him in any of the ones I've seen.
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He's been in three movies, Godzilla vs Gigan (ran as Godzilla on Monster Island in US theaters), Godzilla vs Megalon, and Godzilla: Final Wars.

Is it pronounced gig-an or guy-gan?
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As a German Godzilla fan, I'm gonna have to say: Yes.

Okay, more helpful answer: both in Japanese and the English-speaking world, it's guy-gan. But the German dubs went with the German pronounciation of the spelling and made it gig-an.
 
JD said:
Is it pronounced gig-an or guy-gan?
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The latter. The Japanese spelling is Gaigan in romaji. Surprisingly, it's not derived from "gigantic":

https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Gigan#Name
Gigan's Japanese name, Gaigan, was derived from a nickname for actor Yujiro Ishihara, "nice guy" (ナイスガイ naisu gai), combined with the word for goose, gan (雁); both were influences on Gigan's design in his visor and body shape, respectively. The name may have also been chosen as a contraction of "geiger counter," spelled in Japanese as ガイガーカウンター (gaigā kauntā).
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